1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to railway vehicles and in particular to liners for center plate structures thereof.
2. Prior Art Statement
Railway vehicles including locomotives, railway cars, and the like, are each usually comprised of a main vehicle body which has body bolsters at opposite ends thereof and each body bolster has a body center plate which serves to transfer the load of the body at its associated end of the car to an associated truck which rides on railway tracks and each truck is provided with a truck bolster and a bolster bowl defined by a truck center plate having an upstanding peripheral annular flange. Each railway vehicle body center plate is received within the confines of the flange of an associated bolster bowl and the entire load of the car body is transmitted through its body bolster center plates. During normal operation, the center plates and associated parts are subjected to substantial operating loads and such center plates and parts are also subjected to various foreign objects and require repeated expensive lubrication and comparatively frequent replacement of worn and damaged parts.
In addition to the substantially high vertical loads between the body center plates and truck center plates, there are substantially high horizontal loads exerted by each body center plate against the above-mentioned upstanding peripheral annular flange defining the bolster bowl. The main thrust of previous efforts has been to provide a wear member or liner between the center plate structures without providing special means in such liner for reducing any load concentration against the above-mentioned flange.
One example of a liner for center plate structure which uses a polymeric antifriction material and has reinforcing material embedded therein is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,188,888. Another example of such a liner is a bowl-shaped liner, which consists of a disc portion and an adjoining flange portion made of a separate segmented strip, and is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,075,951.
However, the problem of reducing load concentration or concentrated loads exerted against an upstanding peripheral annular flange of a truck holder bowl has not been solved in a satisfactory manner.